Chapter 330: 320 Navy Warship

Chapter 330: Chapter 320 Navy Warship

Guardian Department, in the study.

“How is the situation with the new military households?”

Yang Zhenshan sat behind the desk and asked Xie Yuan.

Xie Yuan put down the tea and said, “The situation is fairly good, just some minor issues.”

“What minor issues?” Yang Zhenshan asked.

“These people are just a group of refugees, after all, they are physically weak, and having just settled yesterday, it’s like they’ve let their guard down. Many of them are now sick!”

“I have already dispatched all the doctors from the camp. They will go to each Hundred Households and garrison to treat those who are ill!”

Xie Yuan said.

“Do we have enough medicinal materials?”

“Han Fei has already sent people to Jing’an Prefecture to purchase what’s needed!”

Yang Zhenshan nodded slightly, pondered for a moment, then said, “Let’s do this, set up several large pots inside the government office, cook a few pots of tonic, and deliver a portion to each household!”

These refugees have weak constitutions, and getting sick is almost inevitable.

Spiritual Spring Water could indeed enhance their constitution and reduce the likelihood of falling ill, but Yang Zhenshan couldn’t possibly feed it to each family personally, so this was the only plan he could think of.

Take out some precious medicinal materials, mix them with Spiritual Spring Water, and cook dozens of pots, delivering a bit to each household.

Even if each person only drinks a mouthful, it can reduce their chances of becoming ill, allowing them a few more days of recovery, and perhaps those most frail might pull through.

“Alright, I’ll arrange that shortly!” Xie Yuan said.

“Are there any other issues?” Yang Zhenshan asked.

“Well, should we find some work for these new military households?” Xie Yuan inquired.

He wanted to find them some work, so they could earn some income and support their families.

But currently, there really weren’t many available jobs at Tenglong Guard.

The salt fields, engineering team, and merchant fleet were all fully staffed, and they couldn’t just hire everyone to accommodate them.

“This is simple, the third batch of soldier training doesn’t need to wait until after the harvest, it can start now!”

“Have these new military households form a labor team to assist the others with the harvest, we will pay them daily with money and grain!” Yang Zhenshan said.

Originally, the plan was for the third batch of basic training soldiers to start after the harvest. Harvesting is vital for military households and shouldn’t be disrupted by training.

But since these new military households don’t have fields to tend to, they don’t need to harvest.

So having them assist with the harvest is perfectly acceptable.

It simply means spending a little more money and grain to accelerate military training.

For Tenglong Guard right now, time was very tight. Trading money and grain for time wasn’t exactly a loss.

“However, this will increase our expenses significantly!” Xie Yuan remarked with some concern.

While the resources left by the Lan family were considerable, the expenditures of Tenglong Guard were also enormous.

In less than a year, nearly half of the resources left by the Lan family had already been spent by Yang Zhenshan.

Next year, they would also have to support these new military households, which would be another major expense.

“No worries, the salt fields will double production next year, and the profits from the salt fields will increase!”

“Additionally, our merchant ships will be able to set sail next year, giving us another source of income!”

“As long as our current money and grain can cover next year’s expenses, we won’t need to worry about shortages in the future!”

Yang Zhenshan stated unconcernedly.

Tenglong Guard was poor, but the resources left by the Lan family were plentiful.

Under normal circumstances, Tenglong Guard could live off the Lan family’s legacy for five or six years.

Yang Zhenshan only needed the Lan family’s resources to support them for two years. With future income streams, Tenglong Guard naturally wouldn’t need to rely on it anymore.

“As long as you are aware, sir!” Xie Yuan only reminded but said nothing more.

Yang Zhenshan chuckled, “The upcoming harvest and the settlement of the military households will still require a lot of your attention.”

“It is what I should do!” Xie Yuan replied with a smile.

Currently, everyone in the Guardian Department was so busy that their feet hardly touched the ground.

Soldier training, armament creation, city construction, navy building, salt field expansion, and the settlement of new military households, along with the upcoming harvest.

All these matters were progressing simultaneously, leaving everyone overwhelmed.

Yang Zhenshan was busy, and so was Xie Yuan.

After a brief meeting with Yang Zhenshan, Xie Yuan left the government office to inspect the thousand households below.

With the harvest approaching, he had to ensure that nothing went wrong.

After understanding the situation of the new military households, Yang Zhenshan also left the government office and hurried to the wharf.

At this time, the first batch of navy soldiers had already started their training.

The Zhang family’s fleet of over two hundred ship workers, along with over two hundred soldiers selected from the Tenglong Advanced Guard, totaling five hundred soldiers, constituted the first batch of navy soldiers.

The reason there were only five hundred soldiers was that there were too few instructors to train the navy.

Yu Tonghai, Xue Ping, Sun Cheng, Ning Bo, and only a few others could serve as instructors. The other ship workers were not suitable to be instructors, and the soldiers of Tenglong Guard were not adept at naval warfare, so they naturally couldn’t be instructors either.

Therefore, the first batch of trained navy soldiers numbered only five hundred.

This first batch of soldier training was somewhat experimental, primarily to gather experience to assist Yu Tonghai and Xue Ping in compiling “Training Soldiers in Reality.”

Whenever he had time, Yang Zhenshan would participate in training, partly to supplement Spiritual Spring Water for these soldiers and partly because he wanted to learn more about navy matters.

One is never too old to learn. Yang Zhenshan didn’t understand navigation, nor was he proficient in naval warfare. So, he decided to learn, starting from the basic training of soldiers.

By mid-September, the autumn harvest for Tenglong Guard commenced.

This year, the weather was favorable for Tenglong Guard, marking a rare year of abundance.

Harvest always brought joy to people. From Yang Zhenshan to the newly arrived military households, everyone felt happy for this harvest.

The autumn harvest was proceeding in an orderly manner, and the navy’s construction had taken a crucial step forward.

September 20.

The Ministry of Industry sent the first batch of warships to the Tenglong Advanced Guard from Jin Hai.

In total, there was one Da Fu Ship, four Hai Cang Ships, eight scout ships, twelve mother-daughter ships, and over forty Eagle Ships.

This represented half of the warships from the regular navy guard station of Da Rong.

That meant that the Tenglong Guard already had half of its warships in place, and the remaining half would arrive gradually over the next two months.

The Da Fu Ship was one of Da Rong’s main battleships. Its hull was thirty-three zhang long, equipped with five masts and three-tiered decks. The ship’s deck was as high as a fortress, flanked by shields. Soldiers took cover behind them, using crossbows to shoot arrows.

The bow was low and pointed upward, capable of ramming and destroying enemy ships with the wind and water current.

The Hai Cang Ship was a medium-sized battleship of the Da Rong Navy, with a draft of seven to eight feet deep. Agile in light winds, it coordinated with the Fu Ships to hunt down enemy vessels.

The scout ship was a medium-sized fast ship, pointed at the front and squared at the back, narrow at the bottom like a shuttle, and wide as a wing on top. When the fleet set sail, the scout ship could serve as a vanguard.

The mother-daughter ship was a light fire ship. The mother ship was three zhang and five chi long, two zhang at the front, and one zhang and five chi at the back. Only the side planks existed, with a single boat inside, covered, and rowed with four oars, tied to the mother ship with ropes.

The mother ship carried firewood and fierce oil, ready to quickly approach enemy vessels, nail close to them in battle, and after setting the mother ship alight, the crew could return on the daughter ship.

The Eagle Ship, with both ends pointed upward, indistinguishable at front and back, maneuvered with flying agility. It could carry three to five people. In battle, dozens of Eagle Ships could swarm the enemy like a hive of ants, attacking enemy ships and fending off those approaching the Da Fu Ship.

A complete navy naturally could not consist of just one type of ship.

Different ships had distinct functions, and in battle, they must coordinate and cooperate, so the primary difficulty in navy training lay in the various ships’ cooperation.

You might be good at steering a ship, and that would make you a qualified ship worker.

You might be familiar with routes, astronomy, and geography, and that would make you a qualified ship captain.

You might be courageous and willing to fight, and that would make you a qualified sailor.

To become a navy captain and commander, besides meeting the above conditions, you must also be well-versed in the functions of different ships, able to use their cooperation to defeat the enemy.

Yang Zhenshan obviously was not a qualified navy leader, for it was his first time seeing such ships.

As for the cooperation between different-sized ships, he could imagine it, but when it came to the formations and coordination among mother-daughter ships, scout ships, and Hai Cang Ships, he was clueless.

Moreover, he knew very little about the crossbows on board.

He had seen crossbows on the Chongshan Pass City walls, but he had only glanced at them from afar and had never closely observed them.

Moreover, there were many differences between the crossbows on battleships and those on city walls.

The crossbows on the city walls were multi-arrow crossbows, capable of launching many arrows at once.

The aim of city wall defense was to inflict enemy casualties, so the crossbows on the walls did not seek powerful might but rather launched many arrows at once.

However, the crossbows on battleships pursued range and power, the farther they could shoot, the better, and the greater their strength, the better, ultimately so that one arrow could pierce an enemy ship’s deck and destroy its tower.

The navy’s crossbows were mostly three-bow bed crossbows, simply understood as three bows combined into one.

There were seven arrow paths on the bow arm, with a giant arrow, six chi and five cun long and eight cun wide, placed in the central path, feathered with iron leaves, and three slightly smaller arrows on each side. All the arrows fired simultaneously.

Yang Zhenshan looked at the arrow longer than his spear and asked, “What is the range of this crossbow?”

Beside him, Yu Tonghai said, “This should be the best crossbow of our Da Rong, with a range of one hundred sixty zhang!”

One hundred sixty zhang!

Yang Zhenshan did a quick mental conversion, around five hundred meters.

“How powerful is it? Can it kill Martial Artists?”

“An ordinary Martial Artist could die upon contact. Those above the Postnatal Fifth Layer might dodge if able to detect it in advance, while a Postnatal Eighth Layer Martial Artist should be able to resist!”

Yu Tonghai pondered for a moment and added, “However, the battlefield is ever-changing and filled with crises, so no one can guarantee absolute safety. Sometimes, even a Postnatal Eighth Layer Martial Artist might be shot dead by a crossbow arrow!”

“According to my information, many Martial Arts Masters have perished under crossbow arrows!”

“If the boss encounters a volley of crossbow arrows, it would be wise to hide inside the cabin!”

“…”

Yang Zhenshan was at a loss for words, thinking it was to prevent him from being shot dead by a crossbow arrow!

I’m not foolish enough to stand up against that thing without cause.

However, Yu Tonghai’s reminder was well-intentioned, so Yang Zhenshan did not argue with him.

“How long will it take for our navy to gain the capability to fight at sea?”

“A year, it will take at least a year!” Yu Tonghai said.

“So long?” Yang Zhenshan slightly frowned.

“Training sailors is not difficult; the challenge lies in cultivating ship-commanding captains! A navy must have at least one main and one deputy general, as well as four assistant generals to ensure the fleet has strong combat capability!” Yu Tonghai explained.

The main general, deputy general, and assistant generals he mentioned were not official positions but commanders with a certain level of command ability.

Although the ships could communicate using signal flags, much of the time, coordination between multiple warships depended on the commanders’ tacit cooperation.

Yang Zhenshan looked at the ships docked at the pier. The dock was still under construction, with a small hill extending into the sea already leveled out to berth more ships. A straight platform stretched over five hundred meters from the shore, and a neat wooden platform was built along the coast.

Standing on the Da Fu Ship, looking at the surrounding vessels, he somewhat felt the sense of overlooking a vast landscape.

“Next March, merchant ships will attempt to embark on overseas trade. The confirmed route is Jiangnan and the Li Sheng Dynasty.”

“I hope that by then, the navy will be able to set sail with the merchant ships!”

Yang Zhenshan said softly.

“If it’s just sailing, there is no problem; long voyages are also a form of training!” Yu Tonghai deliberated before speaking.

Mere sailing posed no issue. Even if encountering battle wasn’t problematic, failing the training didn’t mean lacking combat power, just that it would be significantly weaker.

He mentioned needing one year to train the Tenglong Navy to the level of Da Rong’s elite forces.

“That’s good,” Yang Zhenshan nodded in satisfaction.